Coppola's return

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After an eight-year absence, Francis Ford Coppola is returning
to the director's chair.

He will begin filming Youth Without Youth in Romania on
October 3.

Starring Tim Roth, the film is adapted from a novella by
Romanian philosopher-author Mircea Eliade.

"It's a parable, it's a fable. It's almost like an intellectual
Twilight Zone," the director of The Godfather
said.

"In a way it's like a Hitchcock picture and Tim Roth is the
Jimmy Stewart - the guy who gets caught up in something fascinating
and big," Coppola said.

The film takes place right before World War II and chronicles
how a professor's life is altered after an "extraordinary change"
late in his life, which leads to the Nazis' interest in studying
him.

It will be the five-time Oscar winner's first movie since 1997's
The Rainmaker.

In recent years, he's concentrated on new versions of past
works, including Apocalypse Now Redux and, more recently,
The Outsiders: The Whole Novel. And he's been working on a
screenplay about New York in the future titled Megalopolis
for more than two decades.

Coppola said a friend recommended Youth Without Youth,
saying it had similar themes to Megalopolis. Coppola was
fascinated and wrote a screenplay.

"I see this all as steps on the path to something," Coppola
said. "Maybe I'll be more qualified to do Megalopolis if I
really digest this film. In a sense, I think a movie is really a
little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get
the answer."

Already immersed in preproduction, Coppola said he feels a
"pleasant, stage-fright kind of nervous" about his directing
return.

Anticipating a release date of late 2006 or early 2007, he
envisions Youth Without Youth as a return to his roots in
personal filmmaking - before The Godfather set him on a
path of big studio projects.

"I just feel that at a certain point you have to go back to the
beginning again," the 66-year-old director said. "The best thing
for me at this point in my life is to become a student again and
make movies with the eyes I had when I was enthusiastic about it in
the first place."